A blog about News.
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PUBLISHED 5/1/08 ---
Bakersfield’s new monument-style entry signs, situated on Highway 99 at the north and south ends of the city, were officially dedicated Wednesday afternoon.
Too bad city officials couldn’t have moved up the ceremony a few Wednesdays earlier. Say, 100 Wednesdays earlier.
Yes, the old, gray monument signs were that hideous. An architect might refer to the old design as Late-’70’s Warehouse — nondescript, bland and utterly lacking warmth...
PUBLISHED 5/01/08 ---
That case of soda pop you’ve just thrown into your shopping cart lists all of the relevant ingredients and nutritional facts: sugar, carbohydrate, caffeine. Ditto for the frozen pizza: fat grams, sodium, cholesterol.
But that six-pack of Budweiser? Take a guess. That fifth of bourbon? Fill in the blanks yourself. Brewers, distillers and vintners are not bound by the same labeling requirements as producers of other foods and beverages.
Health and consumer...
PUBLISHED 4/30/08 ----
It’s hard to miss the fact that we’re in the middle of an election year. With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama going after each other daily, and John McCain eagerly cheering from the sidelines, it should be evident to most Americans that democracy, in all its pungent, imperfect glory, is on full display.
But the finish line for that race doesn’t come around until November. The people of California have other business to tend to first. A primary...
PUBLISHED 4/30/08 ----
Until recently, YouTube was almost exclusively a place for useless diversions. Visitors to the Internet video-sharing site could guffaw at Miss Teen South Carolina’s synopsis of geopolitics, snicker at assorted celebrity pratfalls or bond with the likes of faux-videoblogger lonelygirl15.
A place for civic-minded citizens to keep abreast of off-the-radar news? Sure, to an extent.
Things have changed. This month, in a couple of dramatic strokes, YouTube has...
PUBLISHED 4/29/08 ----
Identity theft was already regarded as one of the fastest-growing and most insidious of 21st-century crimes.
Then a series of high-profile privacy breaches hit the news. There was the succession of cases at UCLA Medical Center that involved the private medical records of California first lady Maria Shriver and other public figures. Just prior to that, employees of the U.S. State Department improperly opened the passport files of Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama...
PUBLISHED 4/29/08 ----
It just doesn’t seem right for the University of California to own and maintain a research station on the island of Moorea, near Tahiti.
Research? On what? The seemingly infinite number of ways one can combine rum and pineapple juice? Real estate agents call Moorea “fantasy island,” but with the state facing a $14 billion budget deficit, some lawmakers might soon be inclined to refer to it as “extraneous island.”
They would be...
PUBLISHED 4/27/08 ----
The Bakersfield City Council “gets it.” And for that, everyone who lives in the city should be grateful.
At last week’s meeting, City Council members rejected Councilman Ken Weir’s attempt to fire Planning Commissioner Russell Johnson.
The attempted ouster of a commissioner, who reportedly is doing a good job, was just plain wrong. And Weir’s further attempt to change the way commissioners are appointed and removed is suspect.
...
PUBLISHED 4/25/08 -----
It’s apparently common knowledge among county election officials around the state that people often check the “American Independent” box on their voter registration forms in the mistaken belief they are registering as independents.
They are not, of course. They’re registering for a conservative microparty that claims roughly 2 percent of the state’s registered voters. Though it has not received the relative notoriety of the Green or...
PUBLISHED 4/24/08 ---
The Democratic presidential primary campaign is posing the old “is the cup half empty or half full” question.
For “frontrunner” Barack Obama and some Democratic leaders, the cup is half empty. The longer the battle with challenger Hillary Clinton goes on, the more damage it is doing to Democratic chances in November to defeat the presumed Republican nominee, John McCain.
With accusations flying, doubts are building about the two...
PUBLISHED 4/24/08 ----
Piloting an automobile through traffic is challenging enough without additional, self-imposed distractions.
Stereos. I-Pods. Cell-phones. Text messages. Cigarettes. French fries. Talk-show hosts. Eye-liner. Chin stubble. Arguing children.
Lately, some of those distractions have been regulated by the Legislature. As of July 1, Californians will be required to use hands-free devices with their cell-phones while operating a vehicle. And a state law that took effect...
PUBLISHED 4/22/08 ----
Taxpayers have the right to know that their money is being spent efficiently and judicially. That’s one of the benefits of living in a democracy: The books are open for inspection.
But a California legislator intends to slam one of those books shut.
Assemblyman Anthony J. Portantino, a Democrat from La Canada Flintridge, proposes to make police officers’ salaries “secret.”
The effort is a scheme to circumvent a pair of 2007 state...
PUBLISHED 4/22/08 -----
Jim Beall’s heart is in the right place. He cares about children’s health. He cares about crime prevention. He cares about alcohol’s cost to society.
But his proposal to increase the state tax on beer 1,500 percent — yes, that’s a 15-fold hike, in one fell swoop — is much too much. Certainly too much to take all at once.
Beall, a Democrat from San Jose, has proposed raising the beer tax by a whopping 30 cents per bottle or...
PUBLISHED 4/20/08 -----
Bakersfield Planning Commissioner Russell Johnson received a telephone call and an ultimatum Thursday morning: Resign from the commission by noon that day, or face being fired by the City Council next week.
Johnson, the commission’s vice chairman, refused to quit. He later told The Californian, “I made a commitment when I was appointed to serve the people, and I intend to honor that commitment.”
Johnson has done nothing wrong. He is a...
PUBLISHED 4/18/08 ----
About 37 million Americans, the vast majority of them otherwise law-abiding folk, committed an identical crime last month.
They bet on college basketball’s annual championship tournament — March Madness, as it has become known. Sixty-four teams, four weeks of hype, and hundreds of millions of dollars exchanged around the proverbial water cooler. The process has been made so simple, even novices can play and win (to the inevitable chagrin of the office...
PUBLISHED 4/17/08 ----
In recent days, the State Water Resources Control Board and various regional water-quality agencies have slapped corporate law breakers with fines and other penalties — actions that help fulfill their duty as watchdogs of California’s water.
But those agencies are inconsistently enforcing the law, according to a staff report issued recently by the state board’s Office of Enforcement. And fines have not increased with inflation over the past 25...
PUBLISHED 4/17/08 ----
Hey kids! Dad won’t buy you a dime bag until you’re 16? That scummy looking guy in the park won’t accept video arcade tokens instead of cash? Can’t wait one more day to get your cocaine habit started?
Now there’s Blow, a powdered, supercaffeinated energy drink packaged to look like your favorite illicit drug! And it’s perfectly legal.
Sure, “responsible” people will call Blow a gateway product, a precursor that...
PUBLISHED 4/16/08 ----
A Bakersfield City Council committee is barking up the right tree. See what it takes to enforce existing animal control laws before putting more laws on the books.
Kern County — and that includes Bakersfield — is overrun by dogs and cats. They are breeding. They are roaming. They are being picked up by city and county animal control officers, and most are put to death.
The problem is not exclusive to Bakersfield and Kern County. Many other communities...
PUBLISHED 4/16/08 ----
What’s going on here? Suddenly no personal file, whether entrusted to the U.S. Department of State or a private hospital, is seemingly safe from prying eyes.
First the pillaged passport files of all three leading presidential candidates, and now the compromised medical records of the governor, his wife and 30 others.
The latest scandal involves UCLA Medical Center, where dozens of celebrities, including the first family of California, were opened and...
PUBLISHED 4/15/08 ----
Teens have enough opportunity to veer into troublesome situations without wrong-headed adults pointing the way.
That’s why the so-called “cool parent” ordinances, passed in recent years by the County of Kern and the City of Bakersfield, are appropriate and useful. The separate but similar ordinances allow law enforcement agencies to issue administrative citations — civil rather than criminal summonses — to adults who host parties where...
PUBLISHED 4/13/08 -----
The Big West Refinery on Rosedale Highway is where it is — in the wrong place, surrounded by businesses, homes and schools.
Its location is a product of decades of bad decisions by Kern County and Bakersfield city officials, who failed to “protect” the aging refinery from urban encroachment.
The homes, stores and schools that straddle Rosedale Highway are where they are — too close to a refinery that presents health and safety risks...
PUBLISHED 4/11/08 ----
The horse has been placed back in front of the cart, where it belongs.
An exclusive offer from local trash haulers to develop a massive and costly recycling system has been withdrawn.
Instead, Bakersfield City and Kern County officials will study metropolitan Bakersfield’s recycling needs before embracing a plan to meet them.
Taxpayers should breath a sigh of relief that the brakes were applied on the haulers’ proposal, which would have cost...
PUBLISHED 4/10/08 ---
Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has good intentions. She wants to protect children. But her anti-spanking bill misses the mark for one simple reason. Virtually all of the actions that her bill, AB 2943, would specifically make illegal are already against the law.
Lieber’s bill would make it illegal to vigorously shake a child under 3, or to strike a small child in the face or head. Among other things, it would also outlaw whipping with an implement such as an...
PUBLISHED 4/10/08 ----
Here’s a nifty trick that might be fun to pull on the tax assessor. It comes courtesy of Larry Ellison, the San Mateo County billionaire who runs Oracle Corp., the software giant.
Try telling the assessor that your home suffers from “significant functional obsolescence” and has therefore declined in value by more than 60 percent — despite increased appreciation in the value of similar-niche homes.
No, we’re not sure how a home...
PUBLISHED 4/9/08 ----
Imagine store employees locking you in a broom closet with other customers for 10 hours because the cash registers are on the fritz. Or a plumber duct-taping your family to the dining-room table all afternoon while he searches for the proper pipe-wrench.
Absurd? Of course. But those scenarios bear a certain resemblance to the circumstances that face airline passengers when their flights are delayed.
Some passengers have endured waits of 10 hours or more while...
PUBLISHED 4/9/08 ----
The cafeterias of schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program must be inspected twice during the school year or risk losing federal funding.
If that sounds like a challenge for county health departments with limited resources, it is. Consider the Kern County Environmental Health Department’s federally mandated inspection obligation: 235 schools. That’s 470 inspections in nine months, on top of the thousands of “regular”...
PUBLISHED 4/8/08 ----
The terrorists are among us. So it’s good to know that the FBI is on the job, sorting the potential killers from the ordinary, innocent citizens, thanks to the terrorism watch list.
Or so we thought.
Turns out the FBI has been using inaccurate and outdated information, resulting in innocent people being kept on the list, while the serious threats escape monitoring for weeks, months, even years.
Is this any way to run a domestic security operation? Hardly.
...
PUBLISHED 4/8/08 ----
It doesn’t cost any extra money to have the fry-cook hold the onions on your cheeseburger. A cup of coffee costs the same with cream or without. But save the phone company a few micrograms of ink by omitting your land-line from the listings, and you pay.
Doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Yet, if you’re one of the 5 million Californians with an unlisted, nonmobile telephone number, you’re paying extra — as much as $1.99 a month for...
PUBLISHED 4/6/08 -----
There is no “best” way to appoint planning commissioners. California cities and counties use various formulas. The City of Bakersfield itself has changed its method from time to time.
But the goal should be to create a commission that will be independent, fair and open-minded, with commissioners committed to being stewards of sensible community growth.
Last week, Ward 3 Councilman Ken Weir called for a change in the way the Bakersfield City...
PUBLISHED 4/4/08 ----
Metro Recycling Corp., a group of private refuse haulers with franchises in metro Bakersfield, is proposing to build a community recycling center.
The center will cost local taxpayers about $1 billion over the 20-year life of the company’s exclusive operating contract.
That sounds like a lot of money and an awful long time. But who knows? It might turn out to be a good deal.
And that’s the point. Who knows? Our elected and appointed city officials...
PUBLISHED 4/3/08 -----
Just when you think a good, common-sense piece of legislation is on track, the Democratic majority in the Legislature derails it. Why? To pander to a special interest, to squeeze more campaign finance milk out of the union cash cow.
The latest example of “what’s wrong in Sacramento” involves SB1345, a bill by Bakersfield Sen. Roy Ashburn, which allows government and nonprofits to accept help from volunteers.
What’s more American than...
PUBLISHED 4/3/08 ----
Vacant, foreclosed-upon houses in Bakersfield and the Central Valley continue to pose challenges to neighborhoods and law enforcement. The word is out: Empty houses make great places to party.
Foreclosures are hitting the local real estate market at a breathtaking rate. Over a two-year period, from February 2006 to February 2008, foreclosures jumped from 12 to 586 — an astronomical 50-fold increase.
The overwhelming availability of “party shacks”...
PUBLISHED 4/2/08 ----
Stop the scheming. That’s been the rallying cry of consumer groups and, to an increasing degree, elected representatives when it comes to cell phone providers and their billing practices.
Lawmakers and consumer advocates have been trying for some time to compel providers to make bills easier to understand and to cut certain fees — most notably early contract-termination charges.
They’ve had some success, The Los Angeles Times reports. California...
PUBLISHED 4/2/08 ----
The single most important way to judge the success of a program over time is to have a clear baseline. In order to know how far you’ve come, you’ve got to know where you started.
Therein lies one of the basic problems with the No Child Left Behind Act. The federal education program has made testing a key tool in its school-evaluation process, but it has failed to set goals for the most important test of all: improvement in high school graduation rates.
...
PUBLISHED 4/1/08 ----
Ask yourself: If Republicans won’t vote to close the yacht-tax loophole, what will they be willing to do to help fix California’s multibillion-dollar state budget mess?
In all fairness, let’s separate Senate Republicans from their colleagues in the Assembly. Senate Republicans voted to end the tax avoidance scam. But not so Assembly Republicans, including our very own Assemblywoman Jean Fuller.
Here’s how the scam works: Buyers of...
PUBLISHED 4/1/08 ---
It’s more or less official now: California is in the midst of a recession. Not a devastating recession, but an economic downturn of sufficient seriousness to warrant the designation.
That’s the word from the economic forecasters at Stockton’s University of the Pacific.
UOP’s Business Forecasting Center laid it out in its quarterly economic report last month: The state fell into a mild recession earlier this year.
Not everyone agrees.
The...
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